Technical Analysis: How to Read Price Charts and Spot Market Moves

When you look at a stock chart and see a rising line, a dip, or a pattern that looks like a triangle or head-and-shoulders, you’re seeing technical analysis, the practice of evaluating securities by analyzing statistical trends gathered from trading activity, such as price movement and volume. Also known as chart analysis, it’s not about company earnings or news—it’s about what the market itself is saying through price and volume. Traders use it because it cuts through noise. You don’t need to know if a company’s CEO is quitting—you just need to see if buyers are stepping in or sellers are taking over.

Technical analysis relies on three core ideas: price reflects everything, prices move in trends, and history tends to repeat. These aren’t theories—they’re patterns you can see on any trading platform. Price charts, visual representations of how an asset’s price has changed over time, often using candles or lines are your main tool. Whether it’s a 5-minute chart for day trading or a yearly chart for long-term holds, the same patterns show up. Then there are trading indicators, mathematical calculations applied to price and volume data to generate signals like moving averages, RSI, or MACD. These don’t predict the future—they highlight where momentum is shifting. And chart patterns, repeating shapes in price movement that suggest future direction, such as flags, wedges, or double bottoms are like road signs: they don’t guarantee where you’ll end up, but they tell you where others have turned before.

People think technical analysis is magic or guesswork. It’s not. It’s a language. And like any language, you learn it by seeing how others use it. The posts below show real examples: how traders spotted a breakout before it happened, how a simple moving average helped avoid a crash, or how a head-and-shoulders pattern warned of a drop weeks in advance. You’ll see how these tools work in real markets—not theory, not backtests, but what actually played out. Whether you’re new to charts or you’ve been staring at them for years, you’ll find something here that clicks. No fluff. No jargon. Just what works.